The Stolen Child(81)

We were dazed by the sooty black elephant of the Hauptbahnhof, disgorging trains by the hour, and

behind it the resurrected city, new steel and concrete skyscrapers rising from the ashes of the ruins.

Americans were everywhere. Soldiers fortunate enough to have drawn duty guarding against Eastern

Europe rather than fighting in Vietnam. Strung-out runaways in the Konstablerwache shooting up in

broad daylight or begging for our spare change. Our first week together, we felt out of place between

the soldiers and the junkies.

On Sunday we strolled over to the Römerberg, a papier-mâché version of the medieval Alstadt that

had been mostly bombed out by the Allies in the final months of the war. For the first time on our trip,

the weather was bright and sunny, and we enjoyed a springtime street fair. On the carousel in the middle

of the festival, Tess rode a zebra and I a griffin; then we held hands after lunch in the cafe as a strolling

quartet played a song for us. As if the hon-eymoon had finally commenced, when we made love that

night, our tiny room became a cozy paradise.

"This is more like it," she whispered in the dark. "How I imagined we would be together. I wish

every day could be like today."

I sat up and lit a Camel. "I was wondering if maybe tomorrow we could go our own ways for a

while. You know, have time to ourselves. Just think how much more we'll have to talk about when we're

back together. There's stuff I'd like to do that might not be interesting to you, so I was thinking maybe I

could get up a bit earlier and go out, and I'd be back, probably, by the time you woke up. See the

National Library. You would be bored to tears."

"Cool out, Henry." She rolled over and faced the wall. "That sounds perfect. I'm getting a little tired

of spending every minute together."

It took all morning to find the right train, then the right streets, and the address to the Deutsche

Bibliothek, and another hour or so to find the map room. A charming young librarian with workable

English helped me with the historical atlas and the seemingly thousands of alterations and border changes

brought about by hundreds of years of war and peace, from the final days of the Holy Roman Empire

through the Hessian principalities’ Reichstag to the divisions at the end of both world wars. She did not

know Eger, could not I mil anyone in Reference that had heard of the town.

"Do you know," she finally asked, "if it is East Germany?"

I looked at my watch and discovered it was 4:35 in the afternoon. The library closed at 5:00 P.M.,

and a furious new wife would be waiting for me.

She scoured the map. "Ach, now I see. It's a river, not a town. Eger on the border." She pointed to

a dot that read Cheb (Eger). "The town you are looking for isn't called Eger now, and it isn't in

Germany. It's in Czechoslova-kia." She licked her finger and paged back through the atlas to find

another map. "Bohemia. Look here, in 1859 this was all Bohemia, from here to here. And Eger, right

there. I have to say I much prefer the old name." Smiling, she rested her hand on my shoulder. "But we

have found it. One place with two names. Eger is Cheb."

"So, how do I get to Czechoslovakia?"

"Unless you have the right papers, you don't." She could read my disap-pointment. "So, tell me,

what is so important about Cheb?"

"I'm looking for my father," I said. "Gustav Ungerland." The radiance melted from her face. She

looked at the floor between her feet. "Ungerland. Was he killed in the war? Sent to the camps?"

"No, no. We're Catholics. He's from Eger; I mean, Cheb. His family, that is. They emigrated to

America in the last century."

"You might try the church records in Cheb, if you could get in." She raised one dark eyebrow.

"There may be a way."

We had a few drinks in a cafe, and she told me how to cross the line without being detected.

Making my way back to Mendelssohnstrasse late that evening, I rehearsed a story to explain my long

absence. Tess was asleep when I came in after ten, and I slid into bed beside her. She woke with a start,

then rolled over and faced me on the pillow.

"I'm sorry," I said. "Lost in the library."

Lit by the moon, her face looked swollen, as if she had been crying. "I'd like to get out of this gray

city and see the countryside. Go hiking, sleep under the stars. Meet some real Germans."

"I know a place," I whispered, "filled with old castles and dark woods near the border. Let's sneak

across and discover all their secrets."

• C H A P T E R 2 6 •

The morning is perfect in memory, a late-summer day when blue skies foretold the coming autumn